It's up to us to learn the skills we need to do this efficiently, and in ways that can't easily be automated.

Wow, I hope you didn't mean that to be as self-protectionist as it sounded. Good way to paint yourself into a corner and get stuck doing one set of data processing for many years to come.

Automation should in fact be what we do with everything we touch. That's the only way we can keep moving on to bigger and ostensibly better things in our careers. Plus it's just plain mean to leave something like that to the next poor schmuck who has to maintain it until it gets automated.

I agree that data is just as important as the system that processes it. And the data load will only increase for the foreseeable future. We need to remain open and curious regarding how we can help make sense of it.

Pierre GalloisIf you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.

The problem with blindly trusting data output is too many people forget the GIGO rule.

We had a chunk of files deleted on disk that were tied to the DB (imaged data). We never found out how it happened, but luckily there was a squeaky wheel that mentioned the month old data was missing, several times. That made the recovery much easier. But if it had not been noticed or reported, it could have been years until the missing data was noticed.

As a developer, as opposed to a DBA, some might find it surprising that I wholeheartedly agree that data is the more valuable part but when you compare the scenario of good data with bad algorithm against one with bad data and good algorithm you can easily envisage which one can be more readily fixed.

As for protectionism? Why bother when more and more has been asked of us. It appears that the more we achieve as an industry, the more is demanded.

Having worked in the healthcare IT industry for several years, I can see how data is revolutioning how things are done. I've contributed to a lot of cool projects that matter: in-home medical device monitoring and biometrics, electronic health record exchanges for both physicians and patient access, and data mining for the purpose of identifying care gaps, drug prescription interactions, or insurance fraud.